Startup and Information Gathering Phase for Windows 95 Setup

When you start Windows 95 Setup, the following steps occur:

1. If you started Windows 95 Setup from MS-DOS, Setup searches the local hard disks for previous versions of Windows. If a version of Windows is found, the program prompts you to quit and run Setup from Windows. You can, however, bypass this warning.
2. Setup runs ScanDisk and performs system checks to confirm that the computer is capable of running Windows 95 (enough CPU, memory, and disk space; the correct version of MS-DOS; and so on). If there are insufficient resources, Setup informs you of the problem. For a description of system requirements, see Chapter 3, "Introduction to Windows 95 Setup."
3. If you started Windows 95 Setup from MS-DOS, Setup checks for an extended memory specification (XMS) provider and installs one if one is not present. Windows 95 Setup looks for existing disk caching and automatically loads SMARTDrive if no other caching is found. The cache size varies, depending on available XMS memory.
4. Setup checks for the existence of certain TSR applications and device drivers that are known to cause problems. If any of these applications are running, Setup warns you before proceeding.
5. If you started Windows 95 Setup from MS-DOS, your Setup installs the minimal Windows 3.1 components and starts these components by using the shell=setup.exe command.

   The Windows graphical user interface appears. In a normal installation, this is the first thing you see. Up to this point, the processor is operating in real mode.

6. If you started Windows 95 Setup from MS-DOS, Setup switches the processor to standard mode and makes extended memory available.

Windows 95 Setup begins gathering installation information to determine the components to be installed, including the directory for Windows 95 files, user information, and specifics about the devices and software to be installed. For more information, see Chapter 3, "Introduction to Windows 95 Setup."